No. It's stupid attacking the ships. Go after the people and their families. (Don't actually do that, but that's how you get things to change - make it personal.)
Terrorism is an illegal means to an end and its effectiveness is highly debatable. Making it personal is one method which was used by groups such as Weather Underground and RAF. Its debatable whether they were effective (and its debatable whether such is even viable in 21st century police states). One problem with these methods is that civilian casualties make these groups lose the moral highground.
Economic damage specifically however (which can be done via legal, grey, and illegal means) is a method which has proven to work, and in this subject it has worked in the past. It no longer does which means the situation (ie. the extinction of whales) is escalating. The activists need to think of different methods to stop this escalation.
Furthermore, the war is fought on multiple fronts. The ICJ's verdict was also in Sea Shepherd's favor but the wheels of justice grind slowly and it is difficult to maintain justice on the (remote) sea. The main problem IMO is the same problem with issues such as global warming: it is apathy, and a hyperfocus on short-term gain instead of long-term gain. That is to say, if you love eating whale, why not let the whale population grow so that you can continue eating whales?
RAF? I assume it's not the Royal Air Force?
RAF in this context stands for Rote Armee Fraktion aka Baader Meinhof gang. See e.g Wikipedia
The definition of terrorism is defined by Alex P. Schmid - The Revised Academic Consensus Definition Of Terrorism. The website I normally link to is down though, so I'll have to link to [1].
Relevant are:
"6) The main direct victims of terrorist attacks are in general not any armed forces but are usually civilians, non-combatants or other innocent and defenceless persons who bear no direct responsibility for the conflict that gave rise to acts of terrorism;
7) The direct victims are not the ultimate target (as in a classical assassination where victim and target coincide) but serve as message generators, more or less unwittingly helped by the news values of the mass media, to reach various audiences and conflict parties that identify either with the victims’ plight or the terrorists’ professed cause;"
Hence, I'd say we used the term "personal" wrong in this context but "bringing the war home" is described by #6 (which is what I meant but apparently wasn't understood as such) whereas #7 explains the targets are a means to an end. Though that wasn't disputed its an important addition and addendum to #6.
As a side note, I recommend to keep these 12 rules in mind when discussing terrorism. It makes discussing terrorism much easier because we're using definitions as agreed upon my academics who study (counter)terrorism.
[1] http://www.internationalsecurityinterest.com/index.php/resea...